Why B2B Companies Are Jumping on Infographics Bandwagon

B2B companies are helping to make infographics the fastest-growing content type on the web. According to a recent survey of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn, more than 50 percent of respondents find infographics to be an effective content marketing tactic. There are plenty of good reasons why:

Infographics tell a story. Prospective customers may be interested in hearing about how your company got started. Maybe you’ve got a compelling “Then and Now” story to tell. Through a combination of graphics, data and text, an infographic can tell your story in a concise and engaging manner. It also helps to build brand awareness and position you as a thought leader in your field.

They can explain a complex process simply. Say you’re a service provider in the B2B world. You have a process that clients sometimes find difficult to grasp-a proprietary service delivery or client onboarding process. Whatever the situation, using an infographic to visually depict the process is much more enticing than bombarding clients with a page full of explanatory text (which they probably won’t read anyway).

They showcase vital statistics. You can risk boring your clients with charts, spreadsheets or PPTs filled with written statistics-or you can design an infographic explaining the same thing in a more attractive, user-friendly manner. The best of these infographics combine a series of statistics to create a clearer, more concise argument or conclusion.

If you’re ready to join the infographics bandwagon, keep these tips in mind:

Provide both text and graphics. Your goal is to describe your product or service using both words and graphics. Together, they make for a more visually compelling and informative story.

Make them “viral-friendly.” Infographics are often enthusiastically shared, linked to and mentioned in blogs. To increase the chances of going viral, include social networking buttons, making it easy for people to share your infographic on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Adding an embed box also enables users to include your infographic in their own blogs or websites.

Let people know about your infographic. Although most infographics are about something else (like your product or service), you can sometimes get buzz going about the infographic itself. Sites like DailyInfographic and Fast Company Infographic of the Day accept submissions. You can also tell the story behind the creation of your infographic on your blog or in an industry press release. (At the same time, of course, you’re including the infographic, thus generating more potential interest.)